The rustling of the leaves

     Since my conversion, there has not been one single day where God was not the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last before I slept. My mind is consumed with thoughts on Him literally through every waking hour, Psalm 44:8. My life is barely punctuated with any other thought. There has not been one day in these eight years that I have not happily studied the Scriptures. Scarcely a week has gone by where I’d not sought and found the privilege of telling someone, or ten someone(s), about His gospel. I cannot love or live in sin any longer, Romans 6:2; 1 John 3:9. My overwhelming lusts and pride have lost their allure, and my hatred of my own sin is second only to my love for God, my family, and for the spreading of the gospel. What happened to me? If you knew me ten years ago you would know that ten-year-ago-Joe has been replaced, 2 Corinthians 5:17.

     Friends, I don't dare write these things to parade myself before you in letters. I am a wretch doing only my duty in life, Luke 17:10. I am nothing special. Such things are but the rustling of my leaves. What happened to me was a second birth. In John 3:8 we read, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” You cannot see the wind, but you cannot miss its effects on the trees.

     God’s evidence of life giving water (John 4:10) in us is the rustling of healthy leaves well rooted in the truth, and ever moving. Our lives are to bring us confidence through our joyous obedience to Scripture. In Scripture, God tells me He did something to me. I am reading and working that out every day by the same grace, Philippians 2:12. In chapter 16, The London Baptist Confession reads, “Good works, performed in obedience to God's commandments, are these: the fruits and evidences of a true and living faith. By these believers express and show their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the Gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, Whose workmanship they are; created in Christ Jesus to perform good works, and to have fruits of holiness which lead to eternal life.”

     The invisible wind of the Spirit has blown into my soul. I cannot and would not but respond. It is just as John Newton once said: “I’m not who I will be, I’m not who I want to be, I’m not even who I ought to be, but this I know for sure- I’m not who I was.”